My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 497

Rurik

The women stepped back from the table, their faces blank, eyes lowered. They dried their hands on linen.

One step, then another, I forced my boots to the table. Behind me, my father's heavy tread came on the stone floor.

I stopped beside the table, one hand on the edge, gripping hard to keep my boots under me. The cloak was dark, and the shape underneath it was very small. It seemed wrong, that Taya could be small.

All I had ever done in my life was follow Taya. Now she was still, and cold, and I did not know how to reach her.

My fingers brushed the edge of the cloak. I gripped it and folded it back. Taya's jaw had been knocked out of its socket, hanging loose and crooked in her face. Her features were puffed up and split, dark bruises mottling her skin. One eye was shut under the swelling. It did not matter how badly disfigured she looked. I would always recognize Taya.

I touched her hand. It was as cold as the table, the fingers curled, stiff as old twigs. I bent and put my face to her hair, breathing her in. But there was nothing. No scent of soap or bread or leather, no tang of wolf. Only cold blood and the clean smell of water.

I stayed there, bent over her, breathing. The air shook in my throat.

"Leave us, please," my father said behind me.

The women gathered the basin and cloths and went out, their footsteps quiet in the cold corridor. Then new footsteps, heavy and booted, came up towards us. They reached the kitchen door.

And stopped.

I bent over the table, gripping it with white-knuckled fists. A man's footsteps paused in the doorway behind me, then crossed the threshold. The heavy boots drew closer. I didn't turn to look. I stared at Taya, at the red bruise spreading like a stain across her cheekbone.

"Vidar Sarn, this is my son Rurik. Taya was his childhood companion, his closest friend," my father said.

At my elbow, the man's boots scraped on the stone floor. His breath came slow and even beside me. He laid a hand on the table, his fingers splayed across the wood. Then he reached down and gently brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. I caught the scent of horse and wind and something I couldn't name, something rough and wild.

"The last time I saw her, she was small," he said, half to me, half to himself. "She wasn't walking yet, and if she was, she held fast to her mother's skirts. She'd grab at my beard when I held her, so small her fingers barely fit around two hairs."

Vidar closed his eyes, his lips compressing in a thin line. For a moment he was silent.

"I never had time to be here long, never time to know her. But I was proud of her all the same. I'd tell folk my brother had a daughter in Ironmaw, a real Northern girl, big and fierce as a bear."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify